Let women into the military and subject them to the exact same standards as men. Kick them out if they can't cut it, same as men. No reason to keep the women out who honestly can fight alongside the men perfectly well.

what I find hilarious are the people who would likely say no are also the people who tell me that female communist guerillas are probably ruthless killers who'd like to beat the crap out of me and are not attractive since they aren't attracted to people who'd want to kill you. Isn't that hypocritical?

You can't keep men and women together (without it becoming a huge distraction), so keeping separate facilities for the very few freakish women who are actually at the same physical level as men is just impractical.

The sun glinted off her small gold earrings, and off the brass tips of the7.62-caliber bullets stuffed into her ammunition pouch, as she squatted amidthe tall grass of this sprawling savannah and jungle region of southernColombia.

Twenty years old and a veteran of at least seven battles with Colombiansecurity forces, this Communist guerrilla fighter, Lorena Nastacuas, seemedto give a new twist to the term ''femme fatale.''

Nastacuas is one of thousands of women warriors serving in the RevolutionaryArmed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin America's largest guerrilla army.

''Everybody feels fear in a firefight; we're all human,'' Nastacuas saidsolemnly before breaking into giggles as her pet parrot, Hamil, beganpecking at her necklace of bright plastic beads. ''But it's all a questionof destiny. We're here to triumph or die.''

When the FARC took up arms against the government in the mid-1960s, two ofthe original group of 48 combatants were female. Rebel leaders now say that30 percent to 40 percent of the combat force, which has grown to about17,000 fighters, is made up of women.

The sharpest rise has come since mid-1997, when fewer than one-in-five FARCguerrillas were women.

By comparison, only about 2 percent of the Colombian Army are women, and allof them perform administrative tasks, not combat duties.

For a rebel commander, Joaquin Gomez, the head of the battle-hardenedSouthern Bloc division, women have a key role to play in Colombia's 36-yearguerrilla war.

''A woman perceives injustice through every pore in her body; from themoment she's born, she is discriminated against,'' he said, referring to themachismo that is rife in Latin American society.

Colombian government statistics attest to stark inequalities between thesexes. Pay levels are as much as 70 percent lower for women than men,illiteracy rates are higher among females, and more than half the womenpolled in a government survey said they had been beaten or abused by theirpartner.

An economic slowdown during the last three years has further skewed thepicture.

Unemployment rates, now the highest in Latin America, are on average 40percent higher among Colombian women than men. The situation is worse in thecountryside, creating potentially fertile ground for rebel recruitment.

''The economic crisis has meant that women cannot find a suitable place insociety and see greater possibilities in the armed struggle,'' said OlgaMarin, one of a team of guerrilla envoys that travels the world trying tocurry international support for the uprising.

Nastacuas, born to a peasant family, enlisted in the guerrillas four yearsago because she could not find a job and her father's plot of land insouthern Putumayo province did not provide enough food for her five brothersand sisters.

She is stationed in a Switzerland-sized zone of southeastern Colombia thatPresident Andres Pastrana cleared of government troops in November 1998 tocreate a forum for peace talks.

The pace of negotiations to end the conflict, which has claimed 35,000 livesin the past 10 years, has been glacial. But the demilitarized zone hasprovided a safe haven for the guerrillas, who have stepped up their trainingand recruitment drive. Many of the new arrivals are women.

One of them is a 19-year-old, Andrea Saenz. She joined the guerrillas twomonths ago in the cattle-ranching town of San Vicente del Caguan, at theheart of the demilitarized zone.

''The first weeks of training were difficult; I got tremendous bruises fromthe recoil of the rifle,'' she said as she sat in an abandoned farmhouse,straightening her T-shirt, emblazoned with the logo ''No More YankeeSoldiers.''

The Colombian military has accused the guerrillas of pressuring hundreds ofteenagers, many of them minors, into service. It also has accused theguerrillas of fitting female fighters with contraceptive coils and forcingthem to perform sexual favors for their commanders.

But Saenz and Nastacuas rejected allegations of sexual exploitation andinsist they carry out the same duties as their male counterparts. Absolutelyno concessions are made for gender when it comes to hiking over roughcountryside with backpacks weighing up to 75 pounds, or frontline combatduties.Despite the influx of female fighters, the FARC's seven-person rulingcouncil is still an all-male domain.

But women are gradually working their way up the ranks, and many are nowmid-level field commanders, say rebel leaders.

Adriana Rondon, 27, the daughter of a peasant family from central Huilaprovince, commands a 20-member unit operating the rebel radio station insidethe demilitarized zone.

''There's a lot of machismo in Colombia, and as a woman you grow upaccepting what the man says and feeling inferior,'' Rondon said. ''But womendon't have to be submissive.''

She said she took up arms 15 years ago, when she was just 12, after troopsburst into her home and beat her father on suspicion of being a guerrillacollaborator.

''I just wanted revenge, and I begged the guerrillas to let me go withthem,'' Rondon said.

That revenge came in August 1996, when she took part in a rebel raidingparty that stormed the Las Delicias army base in a remote corner of Putumayoprovince. In the ensuing battle, 31 soldiers were killed, and 60 more werecaptured - one of the guerrillas' biggest victories to that date.

At the height of the 14-hour battle, she said, her Israeli-made Galilassault rifle jammed, and she had to advance under enemy fire to seizeanother weapon from one of the dead soldiers.

Unlike many regular armies, the FARC does not frown on love in a time ofwar. But male and female guerrillas are told not to begin a relationshipwithout first seeking permission from their superiors, who issue thembirth-control pills and condoms.

''The guerrilla movement says that women are free here,'' Rondon said. ''Butthat means free to learn and act. That doesn't mean, though, that she's freeto have five or six partners. If we're carrying out the armed struggle,things have to be well-ordered.''

Yes, as long as they can meet the exact same physical standards as men and don't demand seperate accomadations. I'd guess that relatively few women could meet the physical demands of combat soldiers, but I don't see any reason to keep those who can out.

Yes, but if and only if they can meet the exact same training requirements that men have to go through - don't dull down the course just because they are women, if they are going to fight they better be able to show that they are just as able as the men.

There is no right to put your country in danger by screwing over the Armed Forces.

Everyone saying "make them meet the same requirements" is just being stupid. You going to have separate facilities just for the tiny percentage of women who are just as capable as men? Or the women going to shower with the guys?

If I'm shown as having been active here recently it's either because I've been using the gallery, because I've been using the search engine looking up something from way back, or because I've been reading the most excellent UK by-elections thread again.

I'm loathe to call anything a "women's rights issue" but I do think they should be allowed to serve in the military in combat positions. Though, if the interjections are separated from the rest of the answer, and you only look at the independent clause part, then the stuff that's written after NO is truer than the stuff that's written after YES. But I'll assume that the interjections take precedence when answering, so I vote yes rather than no, since I feel that women can make fine servicemen, better even than some of the scrawny men I know, and that the spirit of the law is one of egalitarianism, if not the letter as well.

If I'm shown as having been active here recently it's either because I've been using the gallery, because I've been using the search engine looking up something from way back, or because I've been reading the most excellent UK by-elections thread again.

Yes, but if and only if they can meet the exact same training requirements that men have to go through - don't dull down the course just because they are women, if they are going to fight they better be able to show that they are just as able as the men.

what I find hilarious are the people who would likely say no are also the people who tell me that female communist guerillas are probably ruthless killers who'd like to beat the crap out of me and are not attractive since they aren't attracted to people who'd want to kill you. Isn't that hypocritical?